Pictures on SD card went wacky??

jmp2204

Has anyone had this issue?

T2i .Kids fastpitch tourney today , borrowed a friends 100-400 L series lens.First game took 100 or so shots , second game about the same .went home after that til the next game .through the card i my laptop to have a quick peak , looked decent (happy with my camers set up ,hard to see the pix in my viewfinder at the park)(but did not download) go back to the tourney to shoot the final game and my camera starts locking up??? did this once before had to remove the Battery to get it going again. it kept locking up again and again . Final put my 70-300 lens on it and we were good.few more shots , then 18-55 lens for some team photos (they won the tourney) .Home . put card in the puter and i have all these blank files with really weird looking symbols under them and the only photos there are from the 18-55 lens???? puter has pop up to scan files ? click yes for the first time ever and now no pictures, can not even open the file ??? so i lost everyting from today , some absolutely great shots !! all of the most important games of the season. anyone have any idea??

ziggy53

Older batteries and some third party batteries, and even dirty contacts (resulting in reduced power for the camera body) can cause this problem. Basically, an underpower situation from one of the above issues has likely caused the camera to become unstable.

First, take out the card with the bad images and set it aside. Don't do anything to that card just yet.

Take out the main battery and the CMOS backup battery, if that body has a CMOS backup battery. Now try to turn on the camera, without any batteries in the camera, and let it sit for 15 minutes or so. This should completely reset the camera.

Now turn off the camera, replace all of the batteries and, with a different memory card (the card with the bad images should not be touched just yet) test with your lenses for proper operation.

If everything working properly on the camera now, I think that you should be OK to use the camera.

If you still have problems, clean all of the contacts, battery and lens, and try again. If you continue to have problems after cleaning then it may be time to send the body in for service.

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The SD card with the damaged images should be examined using image recovery software. If you need recommendations, just ask here.

jmp2204

Thanks , not sure about the back up battery? had just charged the (factory) battery the night before ,the images on the card are gone ,was very po'd and just deleted the files with my puter .I am intertested in knowing more about the file recovery thing you were talikng about.

ziggy53

I'm not really sure if the Canon T2i has a CMOS back-up battery. On page 233 of the user manual it discusses the back-up battery, but that could just be a generic statement made for all Canon cameras.

BTW, you can get a PDF copy of your user manual at:

http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/consumer/eos_slr_camera_systems/eos_digital_slr_cameras/eos_rebel_t2i?selectedName=BrochuresAndManuals

It's called the, "EOS REBEL T2i / EOS 550D Instruction Manual". The PDF format allows for searches more easily than in the physical manual.

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What I use for card recovery is "Zero Assumption Recovery" or "ZAR" for short. I believe that they were among the first to use techniques to do a digital scan of the entire media structure, floppy, hard-drive or card, and then to rebuild files from whatever structures remain.

There is a non-destructive and free version available for card recovery and image files:

http://www.z-a-recovery.com/digital-image-recovery.htm

Note that recovery can take a "very" long time and you should not disturb the card or computer during the recovery process. Turn off and screen savers and power saving during recovery.

jmp2204

thank you very much

jmp2204

That recovery worked !!! thank you very much for your help

ziggy53

jmp2204 wrote: »

That recovery worked !!! thank you very much for your help

You're very welcome. Glad it worked for you.

Next time, I suggest not formatting the card until you try the recovery software. It makes their job a little easier and the process should go a little faster too.